BUILDING YOUR CONFIDENCE

“How you do something is how you do anything” is a mantra health and fitness coach Emily McDonald often repeats to clients and to herself.

A desire to help people and a passion for health led the Monaghan born, Cavan rooted woman initially down a path of becoming a health & safety manager after studying Environmental Health Science in TUD. Through many site audits, Emily couldn’t help thinking that her efforts would be better placed elsewhere. Her passion for fitness and extensive mental health knowledge, gained after battling an eating disorder, saw her undertaking a personal training course in the evenings after work.

“I felt like I had so much more purpose elsewhere,” she said of the decision.

She began Fit by Emily, an online coaching service for women in 2023.

“Now you’re working with people who do want to be helped, whereas it’s quite contrasting to working in health & safety where everybody rolls their eyes when the health & safety officer rolls up.

“That sense of fulfilment gets more and more every single year,” she said of her profession.

Gaining more clients, Emily found her niche in competing in bikini competitions, which she has done since 2020 under the direction of her boyfriend Pierce Johnston, who this year won the IFBB Pro League affiliated Muscle Contest Ireland. After spending her “entire life” trying to be as “small” as possible, Emily felt empowered by entering a building phase.

“The empowerment I felt in choosing to go into this phase where I would actually gain weight and up a dress size, that made me feel even more in control than when I did when I was in my cutting phase.”

Emily “never ever thought” she could be a bikini competitor.

“I finally developed that confidence to say, ‘Jesus I can actually do this’.”

She doesn’t believe “you can never go into a weight loss phase or macro tracking or following a meal plan” if you’ve had an eating disorder.

“That’s just all noise because it really depends how you do these things.”

“While I was competing, I never sacrificed my relationship with food.”

“This is how I found my niche in the coaching space.”

Since the beginning, Emily has put her all into competing.

“I’ve continued to compete and I think of how transformative it’s been in my mindset, and also my confidence in life in general, I think I owe a big part of my success with my coaching business to the fact that I started to do that competing in the first place.”

Emily said she will “for sure” be on stage again in 2026, reserving this year as a “growth year for all things business, muscle and mindset”.

The health and fitness coach shared her advice for people who may be thinking of jumping on the new year resolution bandwagon.

“Start off with your fundamentals,” she said.

“People focus heavily on, okay when I get into the New Year I’m going to cut out sugar and I’m going to eat this way and I’m going to train five times a week.

“Ninety percent of the population that I’ve come across [via coaching] don’t drink enough water and they don’t get enough steps each day.

“They form the base of your pyramid. If you get them and, only when you get them, should you then start to build up on the other things.”

Emily also places a large focus on mental health and said “until you do that inner work, you can kind of forget about anything else”.